Where to watch the big game and enjoy some specials

It’s a common occurrence for National Football League fans to frequent Casey’s Pub in Loves Park.

And it’s not just Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers fans in attendance.

“We have fans for every team in the league,” said bar manager Rodney Hammerstrom, a Kansas City Chiefs fan. “We’ve had Chiefs fans, Detroit Lions fans, St. Louis Rams fans and New England Patriots fans.”

The bigger the games, regardless of the sport, the bigger the crowds get. Games are played throughout the day, with several going on at the same time. And Casey’s recently added kitchen brings more food to the table to house fans for a good time.

“We do 50-cent wings, bone-in and boneless,” Hammerstrom said. “We have 11 flavors, and we do a $1.50 chicken and beef tacos on Sunday as well.

“For football we have 10 to 15 70-inch flat-screen TVs, and you can watch any game here with personal speakerboxes and have the game on any TV.”

Backyard Grill & Bar has a special on ribs. Lots and lots of ribs.

“We have all-you-can-eat ribs on Sundays,” owner and Packers fan Rich Schmidt said. “A lot of the football fans like to watch games for the afternoon and eat some ribs and wings and call it a day.”

Backyard Grill & Bar also offers a variety of wings, along with drink specials.

“The Schmidty wings are wings dipped with buffalo wing sauce put on our woodfire grill and are grilled with our Cajun seasoning,” Schmidt said. “That’s one of our unique flavors. So the ribs and wings are two of our biggest hits.”

His bar tends to attract a lot of Green Bay fans.

“We’ve become known more of a Packers hangout actually. When the Packers aren’t on regular TV, when they’re blacked out, we get a huge crowd of Packers fans in because they know we’re going to have the Packers on the big screen and the sound’s going to be turned on and it turns into a Packers party.”